Fun times with the best Hostess! Very informative & knowledgeable of the local wineries & wines…read moreavailable. Melanie & her crew are always accommodating & make sure you and your party are well taken care of! Definitely would recommend the tour especially if you're looking for something FUN & Memorable to do with a group!

SO MUCH FUN! Grab some of your friends and book one of these tours. A very unstuffy, casual, fun…read morewine tour. Mel is an amazing hostess and so very sweet (and tolerant of the giddiness that comes with drinking wine all day). The tour consists of two local (ish) wineries, a tacky sacky lunch, a tacky wine glass to drink out of, generous tastings of plenty of wines. I strongly recommend getting a ride to the pick up spot and arrange for a ride home. You will have so much fun sipping on wine for 6 hours...you will not want to get behind the wheel. Mel offers snacks and water to you throughout the day, she is your stand by photographer, your driver, and everyone's friend. Knowing how to swirl and sniff are not required on this tour. The wineries offer wine for everyone's palettes. These tours sell out very quickly so hop online and book yours today. I can't wait to book the next one with all of my friends!

Wow!!! What a phenomenal experience!!…read more Captain Sallie was awesome. She quickly picked up that my wife and I are science nerds and pointed out all the flowers and plants, explained the biodiversity and made sure we stopped to observe the wildlife. The personalized service made it really special. We will be back, will bring the kids and recommend the experience to everyone. Well worth the price! Thank you Captain Sallie!

FANTASTIC, we had a blast. Very excited to share this, our guide was very personable and…read moreaccommodating. Really couldn't ask for a better experience. Don't waste your time anyw

Captain Eli was great at having us get close enough for great photos of alligators and eagles nest…read more its an hour and half tour and paid about $318 for 6 adult and 2 kids. we learned about history in some areas which was really really cool. i recommend this family own business. if your around lake charles area, this is only half hour away.

Captain Eli was awesome & Nicole was great working with us last minute. My littles had a great…read moretime, would highly recommend the tour & we can't wait to go back! Captain Eli was very knowledgeable about the area & gave a great tour, also recommended some places to check out in the area as well

Wow, I haven't been back here in a long time. It's completely changed to completely awesome way…read moremore stuff to do. We literally swim with baby gators today. It was so cool. Will was the man totally gave us the VIP experience and he was excellent on the mike during the feeding of big Al and big Tex. If you or your kid loves reptiles, this is the best place.

Really cool place , somewhat expensive in my opinion, but we ended up spending almost 4 hours here…read more Tonsssss of gators. Also other animals. Birds, bunnies , snakes , lizards. We saw the noon feeding show and it was pretty cool. Workers were helpful, as we had the pass where we could wade in the water with the gators . We just had to ask if we could have them grab one as the place wasn't really busy on a Monday morning . We were able to hold many gators and the workers were very patient with my kids. Cool experience. Pretty pricy

Unpleasant experience with travel agent apparently lacking claimed expertise:…read more When I called Kristie England at Universal Travel, I asked whether she was taking new clients and requested her fee structure if so. She responded yes and provided me with a fee schedule that reflected fixed fees for trips of certain lengths that specified "Planning Fees include one detailed proposal and one revision." I responded that all looked great and explained that I was looking for help finding hotels, and, if we could find hotels, would like her recommendations on experiences, restaurants and logistics. She said that's great, shared a few thoughts about hotel locations in 2 of the three places we needed hotels and mentioned a truffle excursion and a private boat tour, both of which I said sounded great. She sent me an email offering me hotel choices for two of the three locations we needed hotels. I responded promptly with our choice of hotels for those two locations from the list she proposed. She then came back and told me the rooms she indicated were available were not available and offered a reshuffling of the itinerary and different rooms, which were not as nice as originally stated but I approved without debate or complaint. Several days later, she sent restaurant recommendations from the concierge. I said the restaurants looked great, asked four questions and told her she could secure reservations in whatever order she wanted. After not hearing from her for a week, I wrote to check in. She replied to two of the four questions, provided a link to the truffle experience she had mentioned and said she was "awaiting a reply regarding restaurant reservation confirmations." When I asked if I could call her as I was confused about some of the information in her email, Kristie told me that I should talk to the concierge. I asked her to clarify what her role would be going forward - was she still going to get us hotel recommendations for our third location? Was she still going to recommend a boat tour? She did not respond to my emails. Given that we had very limited time to plan our trip, I went ahead and researched the truffle experience on my own and found the one negative review out of the total of six reviews was from someone who took the tour in June, which was when we were going, where the reviewer complained truffles were not in season and so she felt cheated by the operator who did not disclose truffles were out of season. I asked Kristi about it. She did not respond. I figured out from internet research and an Italian friend that truffles in that forest were not in season until the fall, so I wrote Kristi that we were not interested in going on a truffle hunt since truffles were not in season when we would be there. She did not respond. After nearly a week of no response, I called Kristi to ask what was going on. Kristi was terribly rude, explaining she needed to be paid for her time and she did not want to do any further work. I told her that it was misleading for her to not have explained that the fee she charged was just for booking two hotels when we had discussed getting recommendations for restaurants, logistics and excursions. She was abrupt and rude and said that she couldn't make any money when I turned down her suggestions like the truffle excursion. This was really incredible because, after we parted ways, I learned about from others and booked multiple excursions in the area that Kristi never mentioned even though I expressly said I was interested in experiences/excursions. In any event, if Kristi/Universal Travel wants to be paid by the hour, she should advertise an hourly rate not a fixed fee. I certainly did not get a "detailed proposal and one revision" as the fixed fee advertised. She later wrote that she was not charging me a fee because I was a friend of another existing client who had referred me. This was ridiculous, because she knew she had not done the work stated in the fee schedule that would have justified charging the fixed fee. The entire experience was unpleasant, unexpected, and unreasonable. Her lack of knowledge of excursions in the area and encouraging a truffle hunt when truffles are out of season suggests to me a lack of expertise with Northern Italy. I would not recommend this travel agent or travel agency as a result.

Booked my Italy trip through Universal. Kristie did a fantastic job. From the tours to the hotels…read moreand flights, there was no worries! Will use Universal again for our next vacation :) *Note: I called Kristie, may have been a pest but as with any working person, you are not the only customer. Keep calling your agent.

Such a chill place! Will be visiting when in town! They also had some macaroon and flower vendors…read more Everyone was so sweet!

We came out here to watch a high school friends band play. The weather was perfect...great little…read moreplace for the golden triangle area. Small vineyard but it was nice, cool spot to sit outside with plenty of tables and areas to gather. Wasn't a huge fan of the wines, and we didn't try any of the food, but people around us did and they seemed to be enjoying it. We live pretty far away so not sure if we will be back, but we had a good time, place was fun!

We decided to do a day trip to Orange to visit the Shangri-La Botanical Gardens (see my other…read morereview) and thought we'd stop at this old home for our elderly guest. You cannot go straight to the house for a tour, you must meet at the Stark museum across the street, purchase a ticket, and then be accompanied by a tour guide to the house. The museum is free if you'd like to visit that while you are there. Once you walk over to the house you cannot bring a camera in with you. A knowledgeable and very long winded tour guide will bring you around the average sized home for about an hour describing every room in detail. It's a pretty home from the outside and I wish that was all I had seen. The long tour of the inside was boring. Our tour guide was obviously very proud of the home and the history of the house in relation to Orange, Texas, but it wasn't as interesting to out of town people. I don't think that I am being overly harsh. My 70 year old mother-in-law accompanied us; she is a huge fan of old homes and antiques. She found the tour to be too long and to focus on mundane items in the house. My suggestion... go to Orange for the day. Visit Shangri-La and stop in front of this home to see how pretty it is from the outside.

We like going here around Christmas when the house is decorated and there is a small ensemble…read moreplaying Christmas music.